on Wednesday 20 October, 2021

Six loyalist fighters killed in Syria arms depot blast: Monitor

File photo of Syrian army soldiers riding in the back of a truck in the town of Morek, Hama district, Syria August 24, 2019. (Reuters)
by : AFP

Six members of a pro-government militia were killed Wednesday in an arms depot blast in the central Syrian province of Hama, a war monitor reported.

Seven other members of the National Defense Forces militia were wounded in the blast, the cause of which remains largely unclear, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In the northwestern region of Idlib, Shelling by the Syrian army killed eight people, five of them civilians on Wednesday.

Rockets struck a busy area of the town of Ariha, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that at least two children were among those killed.

Wednesday’s bombardment was one of the deadliest to rattle an Idlib truce deal that was reached in March 2020 and brokered by Turkey and Russia, the two main foreign brokers in the conflict.

The Idlib region is the last pocket to escape government control more than a decade into a war that has left half a million people dead, according to the Observatory.

The shelling came soon after a bombing targeting an army bus in Damascus killed at least 13 people in the deadliest such attack in the capital since 2017.